1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to cutting material into selected shapes. More specifically, the invention relates to templates for guiding a cutting instrument for cutting selected materials so as to produce selected shapes.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Many hobbies and professions involve sizing or shaping materials or apertures therein. For example, preparing photographs for display typically includes mounting a photograph on a substrate, and then overlying the photograph with a mat having a shaped aperture so that the mat frames and enhances the photograph. Conversely the mat can be mounted under the photograph and the photograph mounted on the mat, with the protruding beyond the edges of the photograph to obtain a similar look.
Cutting a shaped aperture in a medium is accomplished in many different ways. For example, a shape may be drawn on the medium and subsequently traced with a cutting tool. The shape also may be drawn on a separate piece of material which is then cut out and applied to the medium to be cut. An appropriately sized and shaped aperture or mat also may be located on material according to a template having appropriate apertures which may be traced and subsequently incised. Also to avoid the inconvenience of maintaining a collection of templates having different aperture shapes and sizes, some templates may provide interchangeable modules. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,531,176, issued Jul. 2, 1996, to A. M. Johnson, U.S. Pat. No. 5,860,219, issued Jan. 19, 1999, to C. E. Wilkinson, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,811, issued Mar. 25, 1997, to G. M. Tillemans.
The use of a template for use as a cutting guide is not new. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,928, issued Feb. 2, 1999, to R. L. Lariviere, Jr. et al, describes custom cutting photographs and other graphic materials into interlocking puzzle shapes to construct a collage-puzzle. The template disclosed by Lariviere et al. has channels which guide a blade so as to cut a desired medium, such as a photograph into puzzle pieces of different predetermined shapes.
Unfortunately, the foregoing teachings do not provide for creating similar shapes, silhouettes, rings, borders or windows in or from a selected material in multiple sizes. In this connection it should be noted that a circular- or star-shaped border, for example, placed around a photograph on a page of a photograph album serves to distinguish the photograph. Prior to the invention, obtaining such borders in different sizes would require drawing a multiple of different size circle or star outlines by hand on a selected material, or tracing them on the selected material using a plurality of templates each having a different size outline of the desired shape, and then cutting along the material along the specific traced outline. Alternatively, a template with the desired size outline or pattern could be placed on top of the selected material and then the latter cut directly according to the outline without any intervening tracing step. Such procedures are time-consuming and/or lack precision. What is needed to facilitate the cutting process is a cutting template for cutting selected medium into a selected pattern that affords the choice of a plurality of like patterns that differ in size.
None of the aforementioned references, taken alone or in combination, are seen as teaching or suggesting the present claimed cutting template or the method of using same.